“Do we want to survive? Then we must arm ourselves and rebuild our army from the ground up. In the future, every young Georgian man must complete six months of compulsory military service, where he will be trained in modern military technologies. Our regular army must number 55,000 to 60,000,” former President of Georgia Mikheil Saakashvili posted on social media.

He argued that Georgia must be in a state of permanent readiness to repel aggression.

“The current narrative being peddled about global processes goes something like this: one — the world is in chaos; two — we must stay silent, remain in a state of extreme passivity (what they call ‘diplomacy’), rather like certain animals that play dead when faced with danger, in the hope that we might somehow muddle through. In reality, playing dead has cost us every friend we had and led to Georgia’s extreme weakening, which is a direct invitation to aggression and occupation; a threat that will endure for as long as Russia exists, and even after its dissolution (which I genuinely hope for), we will still have an aggressive North Caucasus on our doorstep. We will need a very active foreign policy and the maximum possible strengthening of our armed forces.

What saved Georgia in 2008? From the first attacks launched against us on August 1 through to August 12, it was the fierce resistance of our army, and then the intervention of our many friends, the most powerful of whom, America, dispatched its fleet, which ultimately brought the Russians to a halt. That is the model for the future as well: our armed forces must hold the line until one of our powerful allies, Ukraine, Turkey, Azerbaijan, enters the fray. We will need a defence pact with all three, similar to the one that exists between Azerbaijan and Turkey.

Furthermore, the European Union will before long transform itself into a military bloc, and we must become a member of it. We must be in a constant state of readiness to repel attack, and for that purpose, a parade-ground army that is told not to think about war is utterly useless. What else is an army supposed to think about, if not war, dear officers and soldiers? I built Georgia’s armed forces from nothing, growing their annual budget from a mere 20 million dollars in real terms to at least one billion. Where once soldiers survived in the field by catching and eating snakes (there is footage of this), we built modern infrastructure, modern military production, and an adequate defensive perimeter for Tbilisi.

In the future, every young Georgian man must complete six months of compulsory military service, where he will be trained in modern military technologies. Our regular army must number 55,000 to 60,000, compared to today’s 25,000, plus an additional 10,000 to 15,000 contracted foreign military personnel, as was the practice in the time of David the Builder. And we need full integration into the military-industrial complex of Ukraine, which, one hopes, will by that point have emerged victorious.

Russia and whatever succeeds it must understand, in any eventuality, that attempting to drive a wedge in here again will not be a stroll in the park, and that behind us stand powerful friends who will, at a certain point, inevitably join in repelling any aggression. Now, certain well-meaning voices will begin to object that talking about preparing for war is not politically advantageous, and that a plan to conscript every Georgian will cost us votes in hypothetical elections, but I have no intention of throwing dust in people’s eyes and letting them ‘live within a lie.’ The reality surrounding us is extremely dangerous, and instead of political anaesthesia, we must tell everyone the truth. We must also remember — I always remember this, and think about it constantly — that Abkhazia is yet to be liberated.

All of this makes the militarisation of Georgia inevitable. Do we want to survive? Then let us arm ourselves and rebuild our army. The narrative being peddled that if we lie down before the Russian bear it won’t tear us apart is utterly detached from reality and from our most recent historical memory. Georgia is in mortal danger, and action is required. The first step of that action is the urgent removal of the dictatorship, and immediately thereafter, the steps I have outlined above,” writes Saakashvili.